[Web4lib] RE: Web4lib Digest, Vol 5, Issue 17 -- RSS feeds

[Peter Schoenberg]

Hi
At www.EPL.ca our subject pages use RSS feeds to enhance specific pages.
 
Government> Govt Alberta (Official Gov news feed)
Government> Govt Canada (Official Gov news feed)
News (BBC world news feed)
Edmonton (Local CBC news feed)
Alberta Centennial (Gov centennial specific feed)
We had a couple of entertainment related ones, but they crashed too often (e.g. Rolling Stones music)
This posting reminds me that we have not added any new feeds over the last month or two.
 
We also generate RSS feeds of our subject pages.  These feeds include any additions to all pages underneath the highest level page.  Additions could be new web sites, licensed databases, links into the catalogue, internal links.
 
Just last week we enabled Blog Entries on our subject pages, (they are also included in the subject page feeds).   Strictly speaking they are not "blogs" but they are blog-like enough for our purposes.
 
Our distributed subject page authors/editors, can add a feed to their page by typing the url of the feed into a web form on their edit page.   They can add a blog entry in the same way (typing text in a box).   The format, title and page placement are all controlled by our web edit pages.
 
Not sure how many blog entries we will be seeing, but we are hoping it will allow a more personal and less institutional feel to the subject pages.
 
We use our home built cold fusion pages to provide the content management / web edit pages for our authors.
 
Here is our current list of feeds we offer: http://www.epl.ca/RSSFeeds/EPLRSSFeeds.cfm
 
Peter Schoenberg
Virtual Services
Edmonton Public LIbrary 
496-1855
www.epl.ca <http://www.epl.ca> 

Message: 4
Date: Thu, 18 Aug 2005 16:17:24 -0400
From: "Drew, Bill" <drewwe at MORRISVILLE.EDU>
Subject: [Web4lib] RSS and Subject Guide web pages
To: <web4lib at webjunction.org>, <COLLIB-L at ala.org>,
        <SUNYLA-L at LISTSERV.BINGHAMTON.EDU>
Message-ID: <D74065A150E9914A97CF888C87BE2EB0010DF7B7 at SYSTEM10>
Content-Type: text/plain;       charset="us-ascii"

I have started adding feeds from various RSS sources into our subject
oriented guides and webpages.  What I am doing this using RSS2HTML php
script to add newsy information related to the topic of the guide or
webpage into the box on the right hand side of the web pages.  You can
see this via our handouts page at:
http://library.morrisville.edu/handouts/.

Click on Advertising, Agricultural Statistics, or Aquaculture to see
working examples.  Is anyone else doing this type of thing?

Wilfred (Bill) Drew
Associate Librarian, Systems and Reference
Morrisville State College Library
E-mail: mailto:drewwe at morrisville.edu